Big City Lights By Ivo Van De Grift

If anyone can find this for purchase, inform me at once. 

Swamp Castle, Pena National Palace, Sintra, Portugal

Beach Bungalow

Also I've just finished an interesting book called Skylines - A journey through 50 skylines of the world's greatest cities by Yolanda Zappaterra and Jan Fuscoe. I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy. It is short read with some wonderful illustrations.

Looks really cool!

From the dizzy heights of the Dubai horizon to the ancient silhouette of Rome, Skylines features fifty of the most iconic, vibrant and often magnificent places from across the globe. This is your key to exploring the world through the architectural triumphs that make our cities famous.            

Beautiful and atmospheric illustrations accompany an introduction to these iconic vistas, summing up their spirit, history and location. Short histories of each place reveal threads that illuminate often well-trodden streets. This compilation is defined by the one-of-a-kind buildings – including fortresses, palaces, sacred sites, monuments, skyscrapers and cultural hotspots – that makes each one unique.

Images via text via

Harold Lloyd puts the cherry on top in Speedy, 1928

2/ 30 days of noirvember

The Third Man (1949)

Morning Light In Vienna

Science-Heavy SpaceX Dragon Headed to Space Station

Heads up: a new batch of science is headed to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon on April 2, 2018. Launching from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket, this fire breathing (well, kinda…) spacecraft will deliver science that studies thunderstorms on Earth, space gardening, potential pathogens in space, new ways to patch up wounds and more.

Let’s break down some of that super cool science heading 250 miles above Earth to the orbiting laboratory:

Sprites and Elves in Space

Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) experiment will survey severe thunderstorms in Earth’s atmosphere and upper-atmospheric lightning, or transient luminous events. 

These include sprites, flashes caused by electrical break-down in the mesosphere; the blue jet, a discharge from cloud tops upward into the stratosphere; and ELVES, concentric rings of emissions caused by an electromagnetic pulse in the ionosphere.

Here’s a graphic showing the layers of the atmosphere for reference:

Metal Powder Fabrication

Our Sample Cartridge Assembly (MSL SCA-GEDS-German) experiment will determine underlying scientific principles for a fabrication process known as liquid phase sintering, in microgravity and Earth-gravity conditions.

Science term of the day: Liquid phase sintering works like building a sandcastle with just-wet-enough sand; heating a powder forms interparticle bonds and formation of a liquid phase accelerates this solidification, creating a rigid structure. But in microgravity, settling of powder grains does not occur and larger pores form, creating more porous and distorted samples than Earth-based sintering. 

Sintering has many applications on Earth, including metal cutting tools, automotive engine connecting rods, and self-lubricating bearings. It has potential as a way to perform in-space fabrication and repair, such as building structures on the moon or creating replacement parts during extraterrestrial exploration.

Plants in space! It’s l[a]unch time!

Understanding how plants respond to microgravity and demonstrating reliable vegetable production in space represent important steps toward the goal of growing food for future long-duration missions. The Veggie Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (Veggie PONDS) experiment will test a passive nutrient delivery system in the station’s Veggie plant growth facility by cultivating lettuce and mizuna greens for harvest and consumption on orbit.

The PONDS design features low mass and low maintenance, requires no additional energy, and interfaces with the Veggie hardware, accommodating a variety of plant types and growth media.

Quick Science Tip: Download the Plant Growth App to grow your own veggies in space! Apple users can download the app HERE! Android users click HERE!

Testing Materials in Space

The Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility (MISSE-FF) experiment will provide a unique platform for testing how materials, coatings and components react in the harsh environment of space.

A continuation of a previous experiment, this version’s new design eliminates the need for astronauts to perform spacewalks for these investigations. New technology includes power and data collection options and the ability to take pictures of each sample on a monthly basis, or more often if required. The testing benefits a variety of industries, including automotive, aeronautics, energy, space, and transportation.

New Ways to Develop Drugs in Space

Microgravity affects movement and effectiveness of drugs in unique ways. Microgravity studies already have resulted in innovative medicines to treat cancer, for example. The Metabolic Tracking investigation determines the possibility of developing improved drugs in microgravity, using a new method to test the metabolic impacts of drug compounds. This could lead to more effective, less expensive drugs.

Follow @ISS_Research on Twitter for your daily dose of nerdy, spacey goodness.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era.

so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell

EDIT: I still can’t believe this took off like it did this is crazy??? Just wanted to let people know that there are indeed errors in the transcription and this is indeed not a very good recording (I threw this together in like 30 minutes at 1 in the morning,) but I’m working with the music department at my college to get the transcription more accurate!

in the meantime enjoy this fantastic choral arrangement by wellmanicuredman i’m in love